Ramblings of a web guy (Tag: personal)

Engineers Work In Their Sleep

brianlmoon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:42:07 -0500

My grandmother worked at the Marshall Space Flight Center. She worked with a lot of engineers. I have always remembered when she told my cousin and I that we should be engineers. Her reasoning was that if you saw a janitor sitting in a chair with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, you pretty much knew he was not working. But, if you see an engineer in the same position, you can not prove he is not working. Now, was she saying she wanted us to sleep on the job? No, of course not. The message was to have a job where you could use your mind. Although I think watching our grandfather work hard every day as a construction foreman may have shaped her opinion. You know what is funny about that? He was the healthiest man I have ever known. Maybe I don't need to be sitting behind a desk with my arms crossed and eyes closed?

For what it is worth, I don't believe that all jobs that use your mind are desk jobs. Some of the smartest people I know have jobs in fields that would be considered "manual" labor. I believe that smart people will always rise to the top no matter what you profession.

Spreading Open Source (sort of)

brianlmoon — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:25:22 -0500

So, I know I just had a kid, but I am at a friends house helping with some computer issues. This is the friend that took my wife to the hospital and sat with her until I got there, after all. She is also the friend that took my other five kids in while we were at the hospital. So, I owe her big time.

First a little backstory. A few years ago, I started installing Firefox and Thunderbird on my non-technical friend's computers. I would label the Firefox icon "Internet" and the Thunderbird icon "Email". This made it simple for them. I would also install OpenOffice on those machines that did not have the full Microsoft Office package and show them that it could do all the same things that they needed MS Office for.

Anyhow, I am helping this friend by installing XP Service Pack 3 and remove some malware that somehow got on here. While waiting on Windows, I notice that my usual pattern of installing FF, TB and OOO.org are all done on this machine. What is cool is that I have never used this computer before. This one is new to me. So, that means this friend sought out Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice all on her own and installed them for her family the same way I always have.

Now, I am not naive enough to think that my friend suddenly understands Open Source. She is not using it because she wants to be a part of the open source movement. But, it does make me feel good to help spread open source if even from the user perspective. It is also a testament to those applications and how far they have come.

Hudson is born!

brianlmoon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:21:58 -0500

Well, it was not as planned, but he is here. Our 6th child, Hudson Bennett Moon came into the world this morning at 8:53AM. All of our children have been born via C section. The plan was to come in at around 10AM on the 16th to deliver Hudson the same way. Well, yesterday my wife starting having some pains that the doctors did not like. They watched her overnight and decided this morning to go ahead and perform the C section this morning. It was a whirlwind. We waited all night to see what was going to happen. Then, at 8:25AM, the nurse came in and said that we were doing it at 8:45 and that my wife was to be wheeled in to the OR in 5 minutes. We franticlly called friends and family. None of them were there. We assumed (you know how that goes) that we would have an hour or something. No such luck. So, by 8:53 he was here and at 9:40 we were all in a room with baby and family. Everyone is healthy. Mom feels better than she did the last 3 weeks.

Click for a slideshow

Oh Hail!

brianlmoon — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:38:38 -0500

We had a huge hail storm today.

It came out of nowhere. It was kind of scary.

Here is a photo that may yield more perspective.

Snow!

brianlmoon — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:57:45 -0600

Wow! For the second time this year we had snow for the kids to play in. It was all gone by noon, but we got out early and took some pictures. Click the picture below to see more.

Sharper Image Bankrupt?

brianlmoon — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:14:14 -0600

I first saw it on dealnews, and read more on Google News. So, selling lame stuff for really high prices doesn't pay the bill? Huh. Who knew?

Trying out Twitter

brianlmoon — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:47:59 -0600

I have decided to try out Twitter. Mostly it is a curiousity about what it does and how it works. The recent outages baffle me. It seems like a very simple application. I am hoping to find the thing that makes it a tough thing to scale out and/or up. (Other than it being built on Rails that is.)

http://twitter.com/brianlmoon

This is so geeky and cool!

brianlmoon — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:57:26 -0600

My coworker Rob is building a little project at home. After some bad experience with cheap black box servers, he got some used Dell's. Now, he has done this. Heh, is pretty cool.

Sleeping with an iPhone

brianlmoon — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:11:58 -0600

You know those NyQuil commercials where the guy tells his wife "You will sleep like you did before you had kids." Well, that is so true. Before I had kids I laid my head down, slept and then rose in the morning fresh. I only needed about 5 hours sleep. But, after I had kids and started worrying about them all night long, I could not do that. I can still do it when I am away from home which is odd.

Now, after all this time with kids (I have 5 in case you don't know) they hardly ever wake in the middle of the night. But, my mind is conditioned to wake on the slightest noise. We moved out into a quieter (aka more rural) part of the state 3 years ago. Hardly any traffic on the road late at night. I find myself waking at the slightest noise: the icemaker, a dog barking, our dog getting up and stretching, or that very rare car.

So, after a restless night, I got the kids up and ready for school at 6AM like usual. But, I was determined to get some more sleep. So, I stuck in my ear buds and turned on my iPhone's iPod. While it was not solid uninterrupted sleep, it was better than what I had all night. I need to find some soft music or soothing sounds that will run for several hours. That may provide the best sleep. That and some more comfortable earbuds for sleeping. It is either that or take down our nice quiet Hunter ceiling fan and get the cheapest, loudest one I can find. That always worked in our older houses.

People still write... with pens and stuff

brianlmoon — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:36:28 -0600

Earlier this week Terry Chay wrote about his little notebook. I have to wonder if that inspired this xkcd comic or not. Is that your real reason for writing in that notebook Terry?

A coworker of mine has rediscovered the usefulness of a notebook. Yesterday while at our datacenter, he kept notes in his notebook while I typed on my iPhone.

I have self diagnosed myself with dysgraphia. It really does hurt me to write. So, I only do it when I have no other choice. I will type you a book. But, I don't want to write the shortest note.

Working out this year?

brianlmoon — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:09:33 -0600

It is that time of year when folks promise themselves to get into better shape. This is usually my time every year to do that. The holidays always put some extra weight on me.

I know from going to conferences that there are some health conscious geeks out there. Well, I found a geeky way to help with that.

Some guys here in Huntsville have started a fitness and health tracking site called Gyminee. They are in the same business incubator that dealnews was in several years ago. It is all Rails and MySQL. It is quite convenient for me and some other guys at work since they built an iPhone interface. Basic accounts are free and fairly full featured. There are some advanced features that do require a small membership fee. If I would just quit buying one latte a month it will pay for it.

For the record, I have no stake in this place. I am just a user and I happen to have met the guys to give them some pointers on some things on their site.

Geek turned Fire Fighter

brianlmoon — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:32:26 -0600

So, I am sitting here today hacking away and my wife says "The neighbor's house is on fire." I go out back to see what is up and its clear its not the house. The fire is beyond the trees, 4 houses down. Just past that house is a wooded area where no homes have been built yet. I look out behind the houses and see smoke in the brush behind the houses.

I should explain at this point that our house has a railroad that runs behind it. Separating us from the railroad is a wooded area about 30 feet deep. Three houses down, that wooded area is on fire. The flames are small there for now and there are people out there with extinguishers.

We are thinking at this point that someone was burning leaves or wood (common in emerging areas, aka "out in the country"). We live in a newly developed area that not too long ago was considered very rural. So, its no uncommon for people to have a burn pile.

But, then we see smoke in the other direction, two houses down, on the tracks. I stomp through the brush to investigate. Sure enough, there are flames on the track down there. Now I see what has happened. The train that came through a while ago must have leaked/dropped something out that was either on fire already or highly flamable. So, my wife brings me our extinguisher from the house and I put out that fire that is getting no attention.

The reason it is getting no attention is because they are trying to save the house 4 houses down that borders the heavily wooded area. Its still burning good.

Suddenly the wind shifts. The small fires that were 3 houses down now spread quickly through the dry, dead grass that is behind all the houses. The fire is now in my neighbor's back yard. His dog is in its pen. He keeps it in a small, tall pen in his larger fenced in yard during the day to keep him from getting out and roaming. The dog is freaking out. I jump the fence and let him out of the pen. My wife gets our leash and takes him over to our deck.

Seeing that the fire trucks are all still working on the dense woods 4 houses down, I start grabbing my hoses from my house. I have several 50ft hoses for watering my yard. By this point, my retired neighbor whose house is in front of the small fire I put out earlier has come down and he starts helping me get the hose through the yard and out to the fire.

The volunteer fire fighters priorities keep changing as things flare here and there. I decide to be proactive and jump the fence and do what I can with my little hose. Luckily, my neighbor has cleared out behind his property. We are just fighting dead grass fires instead of burning brush. That makes it possible for me to put it out with a garden hose with a spray nozzle. I soaked the area behind the two houses next to me for about an hour. Small flames kept popping up, but it was nothing dangerous. We had to keep an eye out on the other side of the tracks. These wooden cross ties would be smoldering and would catch the grass on the other side of the tracks on fire from time to time. There was a lot more grass on that side of the tracks. A fire over there would be bad as I don't think they have gotten hydrants into that new sub division yet.

One of the fire fighters told me that the volunteer fire fighters meeting is Thursday at 7. Since I don't know when our small area will have the resources for a full time fire department, I am considering going. I am working at home most days and I don't think dealnews would mind me going to fight a fire from time to time.

I took some photos of the aftermath. It was so surreal that neither I nor my wife thought to take pictures during the event. There is a description of what you are looking at on each photo, just click it.

Damn Packages

brianlmoon — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:52:01 -0500

Mark Cuban wrote a post about packaging. He is so dead on. I have always figured that this was done to prevent theft. But, maybe it is a cool factor. I use a pair of poultry scissors to open those hard plastic cases. Still, they cause me lots of trouble and do occasionally bring blood.

iSight and my hat

brianlmoon — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:43:00 -0500

My kids got me a hat for my birthday. I think it fits me. Took this with the built in iSight. I have been happy with the iSight's quality. I figured it would suck.

Technorati Tags: apple, macbook, isight

Collin Arrives!

brianlmoon — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 20:28:51 -0500

Collin Humphrey Moon was born at 5:20PM on September 13, 2005. He weighed 8 pounds even and measured 20 inches even. Robin and Collin are both fine. He is the sleepiest baby of our five. It seems he has slept since he was born. He has his mother's nose, that is for sure. The rest of his features are still up for debate between the grandmas. He does bare a resemblence to his name sake D.E. Humphrey, Robin's late grandfather. There are more pictures of him here on the web site.

Chattanooga Choo Choo

brianlmoon — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 07:04:59 -0600

The family took a trip we took to Chattanooga, TN in March of 2005. The original site of the Chattanooga Choo Choo has been converted into a hotel. We stayed in an old rail car that had been converted into room. That thrilled Parker as he has been really into trains (and anything with wheels) for a while now. While we were there we visited the Tennessee Aquarium, Children's Museum and The IMAX Theater. There is a really fun restaurant at the Choo Choo hotel where the wait staff sings on stage with a live band. Some of them were really, really good too.

The Kids Win Costume Contest

brianlmoon — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 14:20:28 -0600

Robin worked for over a month on the kid's Halloween costumes this year. Along with our friend's child Nathan, they all dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang. Logan was Fred. Macy was Daphne. Nathan was Shaggy. Molly was Velma (jinkies). Last, Parker was Scooby. We took them to the Boo At The Zoo at the Birmingham Zoo. They won first place out of over 100 kids. We will be getting pictures up real soon.

School has started

brianlmoon — Sun, 17 Aug 2003 16:15:13 -0500

Well, school has started for Logan and Macy. The kids seem to like their classes and teachers. Molly starts 3 yr old kindergarten in a few weeks. We will see how that goes. Depending on her mood, she will love it or cry her heart out.

The big kids are riding the bus this year. They wanted to ride it. It sure is nice not having to look presentable for teachers and staff at 7:30AM. Those aren't my hours anymore accept Mondays. They get picked up at 7AM and don't get home until 4PM sometimes. They have fun with their other bus riding friends.

Logan is having a hard time adjusting to being back in school. He has been in trouble more days than not so far. Nothing serious, just nervous energy mostly. I can relate. I remember being the exact same way. Macy is like Robin and my mother. They never got in trouble. Macy feels a little slighted as she sees Logan getting bribed to get a smiley face when she has a whole year streak going of smiley faces. I rewarded her the other day for her smiley faces. It helped I think.

Well, I will try not to wait so long before writing again. I don't have much to write or don't know what to write sometimes.

Me, Logan And Basketball

brianlmoon — Sat, 01 Feb 2003 23:14:55 -0600

I took Logan to his first college basketball game on Wednsday night. It was TCU vs. UAB. He was a little bored during the begining of the second half. But got really into it when UAB tied it up late in the game. It went to overtime, which he thought was cool. He liked being able to scream and hollar and stop his feet to the chants of defense, defense. We had fun.